Research & Commentary

Conventional estimates that do not fully account for this rebalancing overstate the increase in revenues associated with eliminating the MID and will also overstate the progressivity of eliminating the MID, because households with higher levels of non-residential assets might respond by selling...

This exercise is a structured analysis to understand the implications that repealing tax expenditures would have for the overall federal tax system. The baseline tax law for the calculations in this exercise is the law in effect before enactment of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (essentially the Tax...

This report considers three options for restructuring the home mortgage interest deduction – replacing the deduction with a 15 percent non-refundable interest credit, reducing the ceiling on debt eligible for an interest subsidy to $500,000, and combining the substitution of the credit for the...

Bad framing of fiscal policy contributes to a poor allocation of money collected and spent. Almost all real growth in government goes automatically to health, retirement and tax subsidies, while spending on children, the work force, and infrastructure are scheduled for decline as a share of...

This paper provides estimates of the total cost of non-business tax expenditures claimed on individual tax returns, taking account of interactions among provisions, and of their distributional effects among income groups. We estimate that non-business tax expenditures reduced tax liability by $1...

Many federal tax reform proposals would eliminate the state and local tax (SALT) deduction. Although deficit reduction often is the rationale, there are arguments for eliminating the deduction based on economic efficiency, equity, and improved federal fiscal policy. Eliminating the deduction,...

Government directs a large amount of resources toward helping families build assets in the form of home equity, retirement savings, human capital, and business ownership. This Tax Fact summarizes the cost of different asset-building tax subsidies. These tax expenditures total to more than $370...

There is widespread agreement that the income tax needs reform, although little agreement about how to do it. A common thread in most reform proposals is to slash most tax expenditures. A 1973 book by Stanley Surrey made the case that cuts in tax expenditures was the "pathway to tax reform."...

Measuring the size of government is not simple. Standard measures omit important aspects of government action such as the many deductions, credits, and other tax preferences used to influence resource allocation. We argue that many tax preferences are effectively spending. Traditional measures...